Bells For Her
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Betsy and Warren visit Doug Ramsey's graveside - and decisions regarding their "daughter" Rebecca are made (this follows on from "Cut Right To The Quick").


**_Bells for Her_**

    "Hello, '_Dad'," Rebecca coos softly, as she crouches before us, blood coating her naked body like a second skin. Her arms are soaked in it, up to her elbows. It is smeared across her belly and breasts, and her legs are crimson with its metallically-scented hue. She stands, making no attempt to hide her nakedness, while she leans towards me so that her eyes can focus more completely on my own. "Come to tell me you're ashamed of me?"_

   "No, Rebecca, we just came to talk. Just… to talk," I tell her, without elaborating. Above me, the jagged green clouds rumble ominously as they pass over the misshapen black hills that surround us. As they do so, Rebecca smiles sourly at Betsy, who is standing beside me, holding my hand with all of her strength – and since we're both inside Rebecca's mind, that strength is considerable. 

   "Really?" Rebecca's expression of contempt is pronounced, and she jabs a finger at the two of us accusingly. "I doubt that, somehow." Her lip curls in disgust, and she folds her blood-soaked arms across her chest. "So what is it you want to talk about this time?" she asks – resigned to the inevitable, it looks like.

   "The same thing we talked about last time I was here, Rebecca," Betsy says, tiredly, rubbing at the representation of her eyes with the facsimile of a thumb and fingertip. "I don't want to have to keep coming here and talking to you like this. I don't want to have to speak telepathically to you for the rest of my life – or for the rest of yours, for that matter. It… makes me uncomfortable."

   "Why?" Rebecca asks coyly, her tone of "voice" indicating that she knows very well what Betsy means. But, as usual, she is baiting her mother for reasons best known to herself. I have to force myself to keep my cool – it's still difficult for me to stand by and let this happen, but I've had to learn that here in the mind of my daughter, I'm just a backseat driver at best. All I can do is be here and let events occur around me. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that without telepathy, I'm a nothing but hitchhiker in my wife's mind… and that annoys me a great deal. 

   "You know why, Rebecca –" I begin, before she swings her head around to face me, those scarlet eyes of hers boring into my own like nails into a coffin, her lips contorted into an enraged snarl.

   "Do I?" she snaps, suddenly furious. "What kind of guarantee do I have that you both mean what you say you do? I can't sense either of you – your Professor took away my telepathy, remember?" She gestures at Betsy with one crimson-stained hand. "She knows what it's like to be headblind – don't you, Mother?" I glance at Betsy, looking for confirmation, and Betsy nods silently. Rebecca folds her arms again, and a look of triumphant satisfaction briefly crosses her lips. Through our rapport, Betsy's telepathy relays that same emotion to me, and it feels… _sour, somehow, like wine turned to vinegar. _

   "Yes, I know what that feels like," Betsy replies calmly, showing none of the anger and pain that I know still rests just below the surface of her mind. "I've never lied to you, Rebecca – when I say I want to talk to you face to face, I mean it." Clenching her fists, she takes a step towards Rebecca and forces herself to look her daughter right in the eyes. "I'm not doing this because I want to – if I could leave you here in this med-lab until the day I die, Rebecca, I would. After what you did to me, I don't think there's a person in this mansion that would think I had done something wrong." She narrows her eyes. "But – against my better judgement – I'm not going to do that. What I _am going to do is help you adjust to being here in the Xavier Institute – help you enough so that you can leave here, if you want to, and live with the rest of humanity."_

   "She's right, Rebecca," I add. "Right now, the ball's in your court. If you want to get out of the med-lab and –"

   "Shut up," Rebecca snarls at me bluntly, fixing me with her scarlet glare. "You shouldn't even be here, 'Dad'. Why do you care what happens to me?"

   "I care because Betsy's my wife, Rebecca," I say, making sure that Rebecca can feel that I'm telling her the truth. "And I care because I want you to be my daughter." Rebecca howls with laughter at that, as if the idea is somehow screamingly funny.

   "Right. Of _course you do," she sneers in pointed disbelief. "You've never wanted anything like this in your entire life, have you?"_

   I fall silent for a moment then, as if I have been struck dumb. "Maybe not until recently, Rebecca, but I still want this anyway."

   "Liar," she says, one eyebrow arched in contempt. "Don't lie to me – remember where you are."

   "No, I never wanted this," I tell her. "Not this way, at least. But I'll _deal with it, like I've dealt with everything else in my life__. You're my daughter, Rebecca, and I'll do my best to make you feel like you belong here." I pause, and return my daughter's almost predatory gaze with my own. Doing my best not to flinch, I step closer to her and try to lay a hand on her shoulder. Betsy had warned me about doing this before, but there's time for me to regret things later… if I don't push the envelope now, who knows when I'll get the chance to do it again?_

   Betsy clutches at my other hand urgently, as if to push a wall between myself and my daughter. "Don't do it, Warren," she says in a warning tone. I turn back to look at her and I can see the fear in her eyes – understandable fear, I guess. Without psychic defences (except the standard ones the Professor taught me when I was a kid, that is), I'm pretty helpless against an Alpha-level psionic. 

   But then again, that's what I'm counting on. Perhaps if I can coax her to open up to me, by letting her know that I trust her, I can help her let down some of those walls she's put up around herself. Pretty arrogant and stupid, yeah, but then again, that's what's worked for me so far…

   Angrily, Rebecca clenches her fists and takes a few steps backwards, her face showing the extent of her emotions. "You shouldn't be here," she says coldly – but in a tone that indicates she's afraid of what I'm thinking, in a strange kind of way. "Get out." In a split second, a moment of blinding pain, I am suddenly outside her mind again. Clutching my skull with both hands, I groan in pain quietly. I feel as if I have had an immaterial axe plunged right into the centre of my forehead – and if Rebecca had really wanted to, she could have done just that. Her telepathic powers are still so strong, even when she's lying unconscious in the med-lab like this, that throwing me out of her mind was child's play. 

   Next to me, I hear Betsy's sudden intake of breath, and she sits up, glaring at me once her eyes have re-focused themselves. "Don't ever do that again, Warren," she snaps, her voice frayed at the edges. "Trust a telepath to know a telepath. You should have listened to me."

   I shake my head – which I immediately regret. It feels like my brain has been liquidised, and is sloshing around in my skull like a litre or two of condensed strawberry milkshake. "Yeah, I get that a lot," I say, blinking to try and make the pain and dizziness go away. "Doesn't stop me most of the time, though, does it?"

   Betsy wobbles in her chair, putting a hand to her forehead as she does so. I think that's my fault – our link is something of a mixed blessing at times like these. "That's not funny. She could have killed you."

   "I know." I pause, still a little disoriented, and then nod towards Rebecca's motionless form on the bed in front of us. "I know that. But if we're going to get through to her, we need to take some risks now and then, don't we?"

   "Take risks, yes." Betsy grips my free hand tightly, as if she is afraid I might slip away. "Keep pushing her until she strikes out like that, no." She sighs. "Remember that she's dangerous, Warren – she was grown to be that way. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll end up getting hurt – or worse."

   "So what do we do, Betsy?"

   Betsy bites her lip for a moment or two, looking down at the floor as she does so. "Take everything a _lot more slowly," she says, finally, rubbing nervously at the back of her neck. "Like I said, if Rebecca is pushed too far, or too fast, she __will push back… as you just found out." She pauses, running her hands over her face. "God, I wish I hadn't agreed to do this…"_

   "I'm starting to wish I hadn't, either," I say, in a pained tone, "but we'll get through this, Betsy. I know we will."

   Betsy frowns. "I wish I had your confidence. I really do." She shifts her stick in her hands and looks at the floor for a moment or two before speaking again. "She still thinks of us as weak – I mean, you saw how she looked at us."

   I nod, sadly. "Like we were prey."

   "Right," Betsy says, glumly. "I don't know how to make that stop, short of psychic surgery. Even then, I'm not sure what would be left of her when I was done… I did lots of mindwipes when I was with STRIKE, and the results were varied at best. Some people ended up with clean breaks in their memories, and others ended up with vital parts of their personalities erased. Memories are a tricky thing, Warren – sometimes they're so mixed up with other thoughts, it's impossible to get rid of them without turning a person into somebody else entirely."

   "Ouch. I'm glad I'm not a telepath," I say, hoping my poor attempt at humour will brighten the situation a bit. Betsy tries to raise a smile, but it doesn't really work, so instead she simply slips her hand into my own and squeezes as hard as she can, her slender fingers seeming out of place next to mine.

   "It's a hard life," Betsy whispers. "I wish we were in your aerie, Warren."

   "I know," I reply quietly. "You told me that before we tried this. You also said you'd feel bad about going, didn't you?"

   "Yes, I did," Betsy murmurs. "Would you believe me if I said I'd been lying?"

   "No," I say. "Guess not."

   Betsy sighs. "Never mind, then." She exhales loudly and falls against her chair's hard backing, gripping the sides of the seat with both hands. "Any further thoughts on what we should do with our daughter?"

   I reach over and touch Rebecca's sleeping form with my fingers for a moment, feeling the soft skin of her forearm briefly. "I suppose we should just keep trying. Something we do _has to get through to her, right?"_

   "I hope so. I really do." Betsy gets up from her seat and begins to pace as quickly as her legs will allow her. "I just feel so helpless – as if I'm getting nowhere. Every time I reach out to Rebecca, I get bitten, and bitten hard. I'm getting tired of it, Warren. I'm almost beginning to wonder if all this effort and energy I'm expending is even worth it. I want this to work, I honestly do, but sometimes I just can't see any light at the end of the tunnel."

   I nod, slowly, and get up to enfold my wife in my arms. "I know, sweetheart. I know." I can feel Betsy lay her head against my chest and put her arms around my waist.

   "I'm glad you're here," she whispers almost inaudibly.

   "Least I could do," I say, trying my best to sound matter-of-fact. "You want to take a break for now?"

   Betsy looks up at me, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Please." She looks at her watch and abruptly purses her lips. "Damn it – I should have remembered what today was…"

   "Why?" I ask, intrigued. It's not often that Betsy is this vague with me, after all.

   "It's nothing special," Betsy mutters distractedly. "I just have to go, that's all."

   She disengages herself from my arms and begins to walk towards the door. She's almost there when I speak again, quickly. "It's Doug, isn't it – this is the anniversary of the day he died. Am I right?"

   Betsy turns and looks at me. "How did you know?"

   I shrug, and give her a small smile. "I remembered the date. Give me _some credit." I move forwards and open the door for her, inviting her to go through before me. "Do you want me to drive you to the cemetery?"_

   Betsy nods, her stick taking the brunt of her weight as she shuffles carefully past me into the corridor. She turns back towards me as she clears the doorframe and offers me a small smile of her own, the dark shadows around her blue eyes slightly offsetting the effect she's trying to produce, and then slowly makes her way towards the circular elevator shaft that will carry us back up to ground level, pushing the button to open the doors when she reaches the curved face of the elevator itself, a few seconds before I do. As I reach her, I make sure to reach around the elevator's doors and keep my finger pressed onto the button that will keep the doors open for her to pass through – a habit I've gotten used to, since Betsy's speed has been slowed down like this. She thanks me softly, and then pushes the button for the ground floor. 

   "How about we drive something different to the cemetery?" I ask her as the elevator hums almost inaudibly towards the ground level. "I think Logan's finished fixing his Jeep, if you want to take that –"

   Betsy slaps me gently with the back of her hand, the ghost of a smile passing over her face. "I think I'll pass," she says, pursing her lips. "Tease."

   "I try," I tell her. "Well, how about we take the Porsche?"

   "Could you drive my Bentley?" Betsy asks softly. "I haven't used that car in an age." She grips her stick with both hands, and raises her eyes to the ceiling. "It's a good car. I think it suits the occasion, don't you?"

   "I guess so." I feel the lift slowing and then coming to a stop, and instinctively reach out for the button to keep the doors held open, but Betsy pushes my hand away. 

   "No, Warren," she says, her voice a little stronger than before. "You don't need to keep doing that. I'm not an invalid. Not any more." She steps out of the elevator and into the hallway with as much grace as she ever had before, her face creasing a couple of times as old aches come back to taunt her for a second or two at a time. She turns back and gives me a muted thumbs-up to show me that she meant what she said. "See?" she whispers. "No trouble at all."

   We make our way out to the garage, and before I go inside, I turn towards Betsy and tell her to stay where she is – I don't want her snagging her stick and falling on something like an oil can or whatever. I thread my way through the numerous vehicles stowed in the garage and find Betsy's Bentley. Removing the heavy tarpaulin from over the black-painted hood and polished windshield, I find the ignition and slot the key in gently, hearing the engine purr gently into life. Betsy's face takes on a look of delight as she hears me approach the door of the garage, and after moving around to the passenger side, I open the door for her to get in. 

   "Thank you, Warren," Betsy says, putting her hands on the dashboard and smiling slightly. "I love this car – it reminds me of a lot of things I shouldn't have forgotten in the first place." She reaches over and clutches my fingers with her own, her anxiety filtering through our link as she does so. "Let's get going, Warren. Time waits for nobody, after all."

   "No," I say, gripping her hand firmly before pushing down on the accelerator pedal with my foot. "No, it doesn't."

*

   The cemetery in Salem Centre is quiet, light drizzling rain spattering the Bentley's windshield. I park just outside the cemetery's gates and help Betsy out of the passenger door, taking her stick and easing her out onto the sidewalk. When she is confident of being able to stand on her own, she takes back her stick and straightens herself out, glancing silently at the sky with a sigh.

   "Somehow I had wanted better weather," she says acidly. "I suppose I should have known the Almighty would have such a bad sense of humour." She turns away, her head bowed beneath her hooded black coat, and hobbles through the gates, towards the rows and rows of gravestones in the distance. Before she has got too far, though, I reach for her free hand and squeeze it tightly.

   "Sure you'll be okay?" I ask, concerned at her downcast expression.

   "Yes, Warren, I'm sure," she replies. "I've done this before, after all." She sighs, and indicates her stick with a nod. "Never like this, though."

   It takes us five minutes to reach Doug's grave after stopping to buy some flowers, the small plot well-kept and the gravestone still polished and relatively new. I turn to Betsy and point towards the gate. "Do you want me to leave you alone here?" I ask her, uncertainly. "If you don't want me to hear this –"

   Betsy shakes her head and grips my hand a little tighter. "No, Warren – it's all right. I'd like you to stay. I won't be long." Then, she steps towards the grave and looks down at the headstone, folding both her hands over the handle of her stick. "Hello, sweetheart," she whispers, her voice almost inaudible over the rain, even though it's only light. "I brought you something," she continues, setting the flowers into the small vase set into the base of the headstone. "I hope you like them – there's no chance of sneezing from these. I know you always have trouble in the summer with everything else, so I chose them very carefully." She smiles faintly, her eyes rimming with diamond-bright tears. "I have a lot to tell you," she continues, before gesturing at her face with a hand. "Look at me, Doug – I'm myself again. I can't tell you how good this made me feel – to see myself in the mirror again, instead of somebody else." She holds up her left hand, the gold band on her ring finger glinting dully in the rain. "I got married, too. You'd like him, I think – do you remember Warren Worthington? He didn't know what he was letting himself in for, did he?" She smiles wanly, and the tears begin to spill down her cheeks, mingling with the raindrops already spattering her face. "And then… and then… oh, God, Doug, I wish you could have been here to help me." She wipes at her face briefly, and touches her nose with her handkerchief before speaking again. "The others are trying, but you're my best friend… I miss you so much. You always knew exactly what to say to make me smile, and I miss that, too." She reaches forwards to run her hand down the gold lettering of Doug's name, her pale fingers seeming to linger over every line. "I love you, Doug Ramsey." She closes her eyes and sobs gently, collapsing to her knees in front of the grave, a wave of sorrow washing through our link as she does so. The wet grass spreads beneath her, and I immediately kneel beside her and encircle her with my arms.

   "Shh," I whisper gently, cradling her against me as she weeps. "It'll be okay." Not knowing what else to say, I don't speak again. 

*

   Ten minutes pass, and then Betsy finally gets to her feet – her eyes are still puffy and red, but her expression and the emotions I can feel from her are a lot more positive. She takes a deep breath and gives me a weak smile. "Thank you for being here with me, Warren," she whispers. "It meant a lot."

   "All part of the service," I reply, trying to lift the mood slightly. Then, I nod towards Doug's grave. "I didn't know you felt so strongly about him. I mean, I knew you cared, but –"

   Betsy smiles ruefully. "Sometimes I wish I'd died in his place. He was _fifteen, Warren. Fifteen years old, and he sacrificed his life for Rahne because he didn't want her to die. I wish I could have been that brave."_

   "Some would say you have been," I tell her. "Look at what you've been through – and you've died too, in Dallas, after all."

   "That's not the same," Betsy says sadly. "I mean, here I am, alive again. And where is he? Still gone." She sighs. "I sometimes wonder why people like Doug have to die, and people who are far worse escape death time after time. Why is that, Warren?"

   I shake my head, looking down at the ground for a moment or two. "I have no idea, Betsy." I pause, and slip my fingers into her hand, gripping it tightly. "Dumb luck, maybe."

   Betsy nods in a subdued kind of way. "That's what I thought. That still doesn't make it any less unfair." Then, after a few seconds' pause, she says "I told Doug once that he always used to bring out a better side of me. I don't know what it was about him, Warren, but he always made me feel like a better person when he was around me. I never felt that again until I married you." She pauses. "He was a good person – more of a friend than I deserved, sometimes."

   We leave the graveside, and walk slowly towards the gates of the cemetery. As we reach the Bentley, Betsy stops before she gets in, and says "Perhaps that approach is the best way of reaching Rebecca, Warren."

   I blink, surprised. "I wasn't expecting to hear that. I thought you didn't want to do more than you had to?"

   Betsy drums her fingers on the car's roof in an agitated way. "I know I said that. I'm just starting to realise that maybe I was wrong in that respect. Maybe it was remembering Doug that changed my mind; I'm not sure. He never would have been so cold to anyone – even Rebecca. That boy would have been ashamed of the way I've treated her, and he would have told me so. He wouldn't have liked her very much either, but I'm sure he'd have tried to help her. Perhaps it's time we – _I – started honouring his memory a little more. I loved him, Warren; I still do, in a way. Perhaps being more like him is the best way I can manage to remember him."_

   And as she gets into the car, I can feel the intense grief and pain that has been present in our link for the past half an hour or so being supplanted slightly by something else:

   _Hope._


End file.
